Here’s the spoiler: No one cares. Or do they?
As I steadily march toward age 35, I decided to refresh my recollection of the 20, 40, 60 rule. Attributed to the actress Shirley MacLaine, the rule says:
“At 20, you are constantly worrying about what other people think of you. At 40 you say, ‘I’m not going to give a damn what other people think anymore.’ And at 60 you realize no one is thinking about you at all.”
Let’s dissect this notion.
What we feel in our 20s seems accurate. As someone who works at a university and interacts with 20 year olds, I can say it’s a rare bird to find a student who isn’t concerned about what others think. Is this bad? Not necessarily. I would think it’s healthy to care what your professor thinks, your parent, or someone you respect. If you care to the point that you can’t live your true self or feel paralyzed from being your own person, then yea, pump the brakes.
Prior to social media, people were primarily infatuated with celebrities they saw in movies, on stage, or in professional sports.
Regular people like myself lived vicariously through People magazine or Teen Bop. We watched Road Rules and Real World and allowed these “Celebrities” to occupy our daily mindshare.
These celebrities fulfilled an aspirational desire to associate with someone we dreamed of becoming. With social media, however, the idea of being famous, known, or seen has changed. We are now connected to networks of people at warp speed and scroll mindlessly through photos of beautifully plated charcuterie and staged selfies countless times a day. We get lost in the internet rabbit hole.
Let me skip to the 60s. This is where you supposedly reach self actualization and realize you don’t give a damn and neither does anyone else.
I’m picking on Facebook here because I’m most familiar with their user demographics. The 60 year old crowd (along with 40s) are mega users of this social platform. I see my mother — who is 69, (but obviously is 29), scrolling through social media more than me. She tells me what her friends from college are up to, what MY friends from college are up to, and she makes me untag her in any photos where her skin doesn’t look taut. I would say this busts MacLaine’s rule.
Don’t get me wrong, we often joke about how we don’t give a rats about anyone or what they think, but that’s probably because we are putting up emotional walls, which I won’t cover in this article.
I propose a nuance to this 20, 40, 60 rule. People do not actually give a shit, it just appears that they do.
People distract themselves from their own lives by watching news on their phones 24/7 and looking at your photos on social media. They participate in your life through shares, comments, and likes so we wind up assuming people are thinking about us. Thus, it makes the feeling we hoped to shake in our 40s still on our mind.
So, wait. Maybe people are thinking about you and they care. Maybe you should care what people think!
Someone once told me, I am who I think you think I am. Let that sit for a moment.
Does this mean we live for other people and not for ourselves? Have we not reached the pinnacle of Shirley’s rule and found comfort that no one actually cares?
At the end of the day, the only person you can guarantee is thinking and caring about you, is YOU.
Everyone else comes and goes, cares genuinely sometimes and other times out of distraction. If you live your life for other people, you will have submitted yourself to being many things for many people. You will be conflicted in who you’re living for, why you care who sees your travel photos, and which sports your kids play compared to the others at the school.
Social media has made “thinking about people” accessible. Just don’t make the mistake of living to impress someone else.
